Category Archives: Learning

Since I’ve been experiencing in the last month ‘the difficult art of prose’ in a foreign language (text will be rewritten three times, here’s the Italian original, definitely better) I’ve googled the said words and have found this article by Thomas Wright on Oscar Wilde that I liked quite a lot (and which incidentally considers the notion in an entirely different way.)

Apart from the difference between poetry writing and prose writing, the article is rich with details about Oscar Wilde’s education at Oxford (it seems that Wilde’s poetry blossomed at Oxford; then Walter Pater came and said: “Why do you always write poetry?”)

“During his undergraduate years Wilde also perfected the persona—part aesthete, part Disraelian dandy, and part Athenian philosopher—with which he would later make a splash in London’s artistic and social circles.

The aesthetic flaneur who liked to pose as a ‘dilettante trifling with his books’ at Oxford was really only pretending to be wicked. The truth was, Wilde read hard ‘surreptitiously, into the small hours’ in a bedroom bursting with books and cigarette smoke.”

“Along with all the primary and secondary set texts of his Greats course,” – Thomas Wright goes on – “he devoured at Magdalen the writings of Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Clifford, Buckle, and Spencer, drawing from them the central tenets of his own intellectual credo.”

ψ

After analysing the influence played on O.W. by Walter Pater and his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), the article mentions John Addington Symonds’ two-volume Studies of the Greek Poets (1873 & 1876), another of Wilde’s “golden books.”

“Studies offers an imaginative analysis of most of the surviving corpus of Greek literature; Symonds also discusses Greek historiography, mythology, philosophy, and the genius of Greek art. In the late 19th century, classical works were often regarded, in Mahaffy’s words, as ‘mere treasure-houses of roots and forms to be sought out by comparative grammarians’, with many classicists focusing solely on the linguistic minutiae of the texts. The historicist school of scholarship was also prominent in the period […]

In Studies, Symonds eschewed both philological and historicist approaches. He attempted instead to enter [emphasis by MoR] into a stimulating dialogue, across the centuries, with the ancients. He regarded the Greeks as essentially modern men, whose literature spoke directly to 19th-century readers.He also believed that the ancients had exercised a profound influence on contemporary culture. “Except the blind forces of nature,” he declared, “nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin”—a phrase that Wilde would quote with approval. Symonds drew attention to the many points at which modern and ancient cultures touched, comparing Aristophanes to Mozart, Aeschylus to Shakespeare, Greek Myth to Medieval Romance, and Greek drama to European Opera. Wilde marked many of these parallels in his copy of Studies.

A side note by MoR. Symonds’ approach is extreme and simplistic. He doesn’t consider:

1. That the Greeks were just dwarfs on the shoulder of giants (their mythology, philosophy, science and art would not exist without the Egyptians, the Hebrews, the entire Fertile Crescent up to Mesopotamia) 2. that these giants were in their turn dwarfs, at their beginnings, on the shoulders of someone else (even though deprived of writing) 3. Rome’s substantial, and creative, contribution 4. the contribution of India and China, equally substantial 4. the Arabs etc.

And yet in many ways he is right, in my view, as this blog tries to point out in various ways (see a list of posts below, although ‘a quirky research on Romanness’ says it all’.)

[Ndr. Infatti per i Vorsokratic Eleatici, per Platone, Hegel etc. conta solo l’essenza, l’essere, le idee-mente-Geist, a complex notion and onthology (link1, link2) that goes on and on – getting too wide-ranging, I know – up to Heidegger’s Dasein (there-being,) to Quineand to William James]

The significance of that absolute commandment,Know Thyself,
(whether we look at it in itself, or,
under the historical circumstances of its first utterance)
is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities,
character, propensities, and foibles of the single self.

The knowledge it commands means that the man’s genuine reality
(of what is essentially and ultimately true and real)
is Mindas the true andessentialbeing.

[from Ancient Roman mens, English Wiki; see wider entry mensin German Wiki; O.Stapledon‘s novels, incidentally, narrate the bringing into being of the Homo’s Mind across the Universe(s): for such splendid narration Darwin is of course there to help him]

Equally little is it the purport of mental philosophy
to teach what is called knowledge of men,
the knowledge whose aim is to detect the peculiarities,
passions, and foibles of other men,
And lay bare what are called the recesses of the human heart.

Information of this kind is, for one thing, meaningless,
Unless on the assumption the we know the universal:
man as man, and, that always must be, as mind.

And for another, being only engaged with casual,
insignificant and untrue aspects of mental life,
It fails to reach the underling essence of them all:
THE MIND ITSELF.

Massimo [read about him when much younger Giorgio ‘discovered’ him (διδάσκαλος btw always hid his capabilities by looking naive: one among many tricks he had / has. Or was / is he really naive?] :

“One thing διδάσκαλε. Why have you skipped the ‘secret of the secrets post’? Will you mean that readers can rest also on Saturday?”

Giorgio, an inscrutable look in his eyes: “This is not important. Do you know who I really am μαθητής?”

In Britannia, oceani insula
cui Albion nomen est …

Maniuslike a numen from another universe was piercing the scene through the mist of his mind. Much to his surprise he became capable of ‘sensing’ the pupil (μαθητής) giving his Master (διδάσκαλος, Didaskalos) an ancient look that made Britannicus of the Papirii – seasoned soldier of Rome – shudder.

He could also perceive Massimo kneeling on one knee and uttering, gravely:

“O ancient-wisdom philosopher, o supreme mathematician & guide of my troubled life. I am so confused διδάσκαλε. It suddenly turned that …. (he looked kind of embarrassed now) it turned that I was unbeatable, Master, yesterday morning, on the A.S. Roma‘s soccer field. What the hell is going on διδάσκαλε? Doesn’t that reveal I a-m ready???”

Massimo being strong willed was no match at all for Giorgio, who ignored him, unemotional, expressionless.

It looked as if he had forgotten his pupil, absorbed as he was in his constant daily writing on his notebooks (he had a full collection of them …)

A soldier quakes

In another time, another place a strong and iron-willed soldier lost his sight and began to quake as if possessed by demons [καὶ λέγουσιν Δαιμόνιον ἔχει …] His head was exploding.

Monday’s child is fair of face,Tuesday’s child is full of grace;Wednesday’s child is full of woe,Thursday’s child has far to go;Friday’s child is loving and giving,Saturday’s child works hard for its living;But the child that is born on the Sabbath dayIs bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

[Flavia: Why not a translator, the point being the one said above, which makes Wikipedia …
Fulvia: … unique …. you are repetitives. W-T-H is this point.]Extropian: il cuore del problema è che anche con un traduttore hai i diversi punti di vista delle varie ‘culture’ sull’argomento.
[Extropian: the heart of the problem is that also by using a translator you have different points of view from different ‘cultures’ on the topic.]

[Mario: Pls explain yourself better, I quarrelled ALL night with Carla
Extropian: It means that the Wikipedia expands topics better than any encyclopaedia past and present because it presents them from the varied angles of numerous (or all) languages-cultures: as an (arbitrary) example – which in any case will bore people to tears – it may presents Julius Caesar seen by the French (ex-Gauls: so as a butcher of their ancient culture); by the Germans (as the man who put them in contact with the Mediterranean civilization: the best scholars of the ancient Mediterranean, the Germans, possibly not by chance); by the British and the Americans, who admire the ‘imperial’ and genius of the Romans; by the (ex-Vikings) Scandinavians who may be more objective for the reason they don’t give a damn about these incomprehensible Mediterraneans, they being only the periphery of Nordic-Germanic Europe; by the Italians, dulcis in fundo, who see in Caesar the symbol of a glorious past that makes them stupidly wander about with bloated chests.

[Fulvia: Well, no objective history then?
Extropian: It never existed, such a thing. We digress though.
Flavia: Okay, we’ve focused now most of the uniqueness of the Wikipedia: a multi-angled approach to topics, a better knowledge of languages plus of the cultures behind the languages.
Extropian: I too have donated money btw: a small amount but monthly, like Giovanni.]

[Andrea: I am a boomer like all of you so to me ‘free knowledge for all’ counts. They were our ideals. What about the young nowadays? All they they care for is making money. Fast.
Flavia: No pessimism. Take those of the 99% and those of the 1% (a ‘not only US’, but globalized, thing): to the non boomer the former, ‘free knowledge to all’ , the 99%, should still count. One has just to market this concept by asking help from marketing specialists.

Extropian: I know what you mean. They in fact asked me after donation: “What would you say to a friend to get them to donate?” I replied in the same way as Flavia and Andrea: ‘free knowledge for all’ which is still valuable today (the ad-free things seems less relevant provided you have sold the idea of knoweldge for all]

In an earlier post we had said that our writings are finding free inspiration in the technique of dialectics which involves a dialogue we carry out 1) within our mind, 2) among minds (mostly through books) and 3) with readers.

As far as point 2) since we are not important persons, hence not in a position to recreate at our place a circle with top intellectuals, this virtualSymposium is what is left to us.

Which involves a certain number of virtual guests, a virtual guest being “a quotation or just a reference to a book passage“. The ideas of an author, dead or alive, participate in the discussion thanks to the greatest invention of all time: writing.

ψ

I was trying to explain this whole “Virtual Symposium & Writing” concept to this young (and uncouth) Roman, some time ago.

“Darling Delio, I am feeling a little tired and can’t write much. But please write to me all the same and tell me everything at school that interests you. I think you must like history, as I liked it when I was your age, because it deals with living people, and everything that concerns people, as many people as possible, all people in the world, in so far as they unite together in society and work and struggle and make a bid for a better life – all that can’t fail to please you more than anything else, isn’t that right?”

“History is interesting because the world today and we who live in it are the result of what has happened in the past, the result of history. If we know something about the past, it is easier to understand the present. It is not true that history repeats itself: no event is exactly the same as another. Yet if we know what happened in the past we can make a better guess at what is likely to happen in the future.”